Good morning, every new year, financial publication Finews from Switzerland, asks its readers to choose their Swiss financial word of the year.
📊 In 2021 they had a clear winner: greenwashing.
The word represents the false claims and empty promises made by corporations about their environment/ sustainability goals.
Origin: Back in the 1980s, environmentalist Jay Westerveld was on a research trip to Samoa, where he sneaked into a resort to steal some towels.
The resort had stuck up a note urging guests to re-use towels to help the environment, which struck him as ironic.
“Wasn’t the same resort harming the local ecosystem by expanding and building more bungalows,” he thought. They likely didn’t care about the environment, but it all “came out in the greenwash,” he eventually wrote in a literary magazine essay.
Chloride Corrosion Just Killed 700 Apartments In Gurugram
Gurugram's project-construction-quality cage seems to have been rattled violently. And as a result, another nasty skeleton has fallen out of it.
Abandon Ship!
During a recent construction audit, NBCC's Green View Housing Society in Sector 37D, Gurugram, was found completely unsafe for living.
So, to prevent another catastrophic structural failure, all the project's residents have been asked to vacate their homes by March 1, 2022. The entire project comprising 700 apartments, will then be demolished.
Mind Blowing Corrosion
When NBCC(India) Chairman and MD, P K Gupta checked out the project recently, he was shocked at how such a large development could have deteriorated in just 4 to 5 years since its completion.
The IIT-Delhi team, that was running the audit was aghast at how high levels of Chloride in the water had eaten away into the buildings' core like a cancer.
Relocation Assistance
Per this ET report, NBCC officials met with 140 apartment owners and promised:
📌 Alternate accommodation of similar quality and size
📌 Monetary compensation to cover rent if an apartment owner chose to find his own acco
In One Sip
While that is the least to be expected from NBCC - a premiere Govt. of India organisation, tasked with building mega projects across the country - the company must also realise what this does to their brand equity.
We mean come on, projects constructed by the organisation should become benchmarks of good quality, instead of becoming subjects of demolition GIFs. That's Supertech's forte.
4 Things We Are Watching
📎 The Uttar Pradesh Real Estate Regulatory Authority (UPRERA) has slapped a collective fine of INR 1.40 crore on 9 real estate developers in the state after they failed to fall in line with regulatory orders, despite RERA allowing them sufficient time to comply.
📎 Amazon India just leased 154,000 square feet of Grade-A warehousing space in Pune’s Khed for 20 years from industrial real estate and logistics parks developer IndoSpace, continuing its aggressive expansion of storage and distribution capabilities. We reckon the press release was sent out well within office hours.
📎 The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is in talks with the ministry of housing and urban affairs (MOHUA) to free up land it holds along national highways connecting major tourist spots and religious sites to develop realty projects.
📎 India Inc is likely to give out a 9.9% salary hike in 2022 compared to 9.3% in 2021, according to Aon plc. Per the study, which analysed data across 1,500 companies from more than 40 industries, this is the highest hike in the last five years.
Are Real Estate Folks Serious About ESG?
We have all seen plastic carry bags in shopping malls as well as tissue paper in pubs claiming to be made out of 100% recycled paper.
Most of the time these are, in fact, examples of harmless 'greenwashing'.
However, when ESG claims are not what they seem in the commercial real estate world, the impact on the environment is much more profound, and the stakes are much higher.
Following The Green
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing principles are more in vogue today than ever before, and it’s becoming increasingly easier to spot large commercial real estate firms that have incorporated ESG practices into their business.
And who not? Real estate developments simply follow the money and per Bloomberg, global ESG assets are on track to exceed USD53 trillion by 2025 - more than a third of total assets under management.
But Seriously. . .
While the real estate sector's increased emphasis on ESG is a result of intensifying scrutiny, the air around ESG compliance is still as opaque as the NCR smog the day after Diwali.
And that's because the problem lies with the ESG ratings itself, and possibly even green building certifications, which are a mish-mash of subjective measurements.
The jargon laced goop of sustainability metrics relies on providers using their own data and definitions that are often arbitrary, biased and ambiguous.
Is That True?
Pretty much. A recent Bloomberg investigation revealed that MSCI, the world’s leading ESG rating company, doesn’t actually measure a company’s impact on the planet. Instead, its upside-down ratings “gauge the opposite: the potential impact of the world on the company and its shareholders.”
Still On Top Though. . .
While it's easy to be cynical and assume that green funds are all about er, greenwashing, if you look at all green claims, the ones made by the real estate sector are the most measurable.
And, the sector is doing some of the very best and most objective work on this, feel experts.
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What if your weekly trip to the shopping mall is replaced by a login to a virtual mall in the metaverse, where you can spend hours, meet your friends and interact with them over sushi JPEGS in real-time?
A virtual mall is coming soon and it’s becoming a reality, all thanks to metaverse virtual real estate seller, Metamall.
“It’s between the physical mall and traditional e-commerce,” Serge Gianchandani, co-founder of Metamall told The Indian Express.
We hope someday there's a metaverse for newsletters too. 💭
Good day. 💚
☕ The Crew@Ginger Chai